Our favorite Google Doodles through the years (pictures)

Growing out of a simple "out of office" nod to Burning Man, the Google Doodle has turned into a regular decorative tribute. Here's a look back at some of the most memorable of the bunch.

Read More

The first doodle: Burning Man 1998

The concept of the Google Doodle was born on August 30, 1998 when company co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin placed a simple stick-figure drawing behind the second "o" in the word Google. This first Google logo art was intended as a message to the site's users that the founders were "out of office" at the Burning Man festival.

While this first little doodle was a relatively simple sketch, the idea of decorating the Google logo to celebrate notable events was born -- a tradition which is today stronger than ever. As the doodles have continued to grow, new technologies have led to more complex, entertaining, and creative artistic concepts. Today, Google employs a team of illustrators and engineers known as "Doodlers" to brighten up the Google home page.

100th anniversary of manned flight

This December 16, 2003 doodle commemorated the 100th anniversary of the first controlled, powered heavier-than-air manned flight by the Wright brothers a few miles south of Kitty Hawk, N.C., on December 17, 1903. Truth be told, there is a continuing debate about who ought to receive recognition, with champions of the famed Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont arguing that he was first.

Large Hadron Collider

On September 10, 2008, the doodle commemorated the Large Hadron Collider, a high-energy particle collider in Switzerland which researchers have used to test different theories of particle physics and high-energy physics. It's also played a central role in the hunt to prove the existence of the Higgs-Boson, the sub-atomic particle that was predicted about a half century ago.

50th anniversary of NASA

On July 29, 2008, the Google doodle commemorated the 50th anniversary of NASA's founding, which was an indirect response to the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite.

50th anniversary of the Lego brick

This doodle on January 28, 2008, marked the 50th anniversary of the Lego brick, established in Billund, Denmark by master carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen, who was aided by his 12-year-old son Godtfred Kirk Christiansen.

Happy New Year & 25 years of TCP/IP

On January 1, 2008, the doodle was dedicated to the arrival of the new year, as well as to mark 25 years since the invention of Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), the basic communication protocol for the Internet.

Discovery of water on the moon

On November 13, 2009, Google celebrated the discovery of water on the moon. The doodlers had only four hours to work on this from start to finish -- an exciting day for a doodler as well as for the world of science.

Discovery of X-rays

Asteroid explorer Hayabusa returns

Asteroid explorer Hayabusa was launched on May 9, 2003 and rendezvoused with the near-Earth asteroid named 25143 Itokawa in mid-September 2005. After arriving at Itokawa, Hayabusa studied the asteroid and then in November 2005, it landed on the asteroid and collected samples which were returned to Earth aboard the spacecraft on June 13, 2010, when this doodle was posted.

30th anniversary of Pac-Man

On May 21, 2010, for the 30th anniversary of the Pac-Man video game, Google created one of the most popular doodles ever. This was an interactive doodle which blended the Google logo and Pac-Man into a fully playable game.

Marcin Wichary, senior UX designer and developer, recalls:"When I was growing up, my dad had the best job I could possibly imagine: He was an arcade game and pinball technician. For me, that meant summer trips through Poland's coastal cities with their seasonal arcade parlors; peeking inside cabinets to learn programming and engineering secrets; and, of course, free games!"

Parkes Observatory's 50th anniversary

Pierre de Fermat's 410th birthday

Doodler Sophia Foster-Dimino posted to the Google blog on the occasion of Pierre de Fermat's 410th birthday on August 17, 2011:

"Fermat wrote many little theorems, including the deceptively simple Last Theorem, which states that no three positive integers a, b, and c can satisfy the equation an + bn = cn when n is greater than two. Fermat first scrawled this supposition in the margins of the Arithmetica by Diophantus, followed by the note: 'I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain.' It remains hotly contested to this day whether Fermat actually did have a proof, or whether he was just using the convenient excuse of a small margin to avoid being held responsible for it. Either way, his theorem remained unproved until 1995, when British mathematician Andrew Wiles successfully developed a solution -- a saga documented in the excellent BBC Horizon documentary, 'Fermat's Last Theorem.' We were so tickled by Fermat's little jab that we tried something similar. When this doodle ran, the hover text read: 'I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this theorem, which this doodle is too small to contain.'"

Total lunar eclipse

Les Paul's 96th birthday

On June 9, 2011, for jazz guitarist Les Paul's 96th birthday, Google created one of the coolest doodles ever. Another interactive, playable logo, this time inspired by the guitar developed by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee who made the sound of rock and roll possible.

This doodle was made with a combination of JavaScript, HTML5 Canvas to draw the guitar strings, CSS, Flash for sound, and tools like the Google Font API, goo.gl, and App Engine.

Google says that in the first 48 hours in the US, people playing music on the guitar doodle recorded 5.1 years' worth of music and 40 million songs using the doodle. And all those songs were played back 870,000 times!

79th anniversary of the first drive-in movie

Robert Moog's 78th birthday

Another amazing musical doodle, on May 23, 2012, Google celebrated the 78th birthday of Robert Moog, who unleashed a new universe of sounds into musicdom with his invention of the electronic analog Moog Synthesizer, influencing a generation of music.

Joey Hurst, software engineer at Google, writes, "Much like the musical machines Bob Moog created, this doodle was synthesized from a number of smaller components to form a unique instrument. When experienced with Google Chrome, sound is generated natively using the Web Audio API -- a doodle first (for other browsers the Flash plugin is used). This doodle also takes advantage of JavaScript, Closure libraries, CSS3, and tools like Google Web Fonts, the Google+ API, the Google URL Shortener, and App Engine."

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz's 155th birthday

For Heinrich Rudolf Hertz's 155th birthday, the Google doodle took on an entirely new form. Hertz was the first to conclusively prove the existence of electromagnetic waves by engineering instruments to transmit and receive radio pulses using experimental procedures that ruled out all other known wireless phenomena.

Roswell Incident's 66th anniversary

This storytelling doodle marks the 66th anniversary of the Roswell Incident and an alien, who, despite having mastered interstellar space travel, appears less than adept at making a smooth landing on Earth.
Watch the whole doodle here.

Douglas Adams' 61st birthday

Douglas Adams, one of the most celebrated and beloved humorists of the 20th century, had an imagination that defied gravity and soared past Earth's atmosphere. As a young man, he famously got the first inkling of an idea for "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" while hitchhiking across Europe, pausing to contemplate the starry night sky.

Nicolaus Copernicus' 540th birthday

The doodle from February 19, 2013 was a nod to astronomer and mathematician Nicolaus Copernicus, a shining star of the Renaissance. His major contribution to science is his heliocentric theory, which asserts that the sun is the center of our solar system.